Crimson Snow (14 page)

The streets in the downtown area, however, were all paved, and though they had begun to turn slushy, they were navigable. In front of the fine Oliver Hotel they had been shoveled clean, and as Hilda neared the hotel she saw Erik and another boy leaning on shovels, talking.

“Did you do all this?” she said, when she had crossed the beautifully clean street.

“Well,” said Erik, “Andy did most of it. I helped, though.”

“You did a very good job, both of you. It is nice to see you, Andy.” For Andy was an old friend. A year or two older than Erik, he had helped him out of a number of scrapes and a few instances of serious trouble. “But you are not in school? Or no, it is not open.”

“High school's open. Just Colfax is closed still. But I'm finished with school,” said Andy. “I'm fifteen. I work here at the hotel now, and for good money, too.” He held his head a little higher, and Hilda realized his jaunty round cap was part of a bellboy's uniform.

“But that is fine! Your family must be very proud of you.”

Andy shuffled his feet. “My ma is.”

Hilda shot Erik a look. He glowered at her. She nodded. She would ask him later about Andy's father. So many immigrant families were without one parent, the other lost to disease or accident or, in some cases, to drunkenness or even jail. America was not, for many of her new residents, all that they had hoped.

Erik spoke. “Hilda, we've found out a lot! I was waitin' for you to come. What took you so long?”

“I, too, have learned things. But it is too cold out here to talk about them. Andy, is there a place where we could go to talk?”

“Sure thing! I've got an office!”

He led them into the hotel to a cubicle behind the front desk. Few of the hotel's luxurious appointments could be seen here, but the floor was of marble and the electric light fixture was shaded with beautiful amber glass.

Andy pointed to the three wooden chairs taking up most of the space in the tiny room. “See, this is where us bellboys wait until we're needed. The others are busy now, I guess, and if a bell rings I'll have to go, but this is mostly a slow time. The guests as was leavin' early has left, and them that's leavin' late are havin' their breakfast, and nobody much comes in before afternoon. So unless there's somethin' else for me to do, like Erik and me just cleaned the street, I'm a gentleman of leisure.” He gestured grandly. “Take a seat.”

They shed their outer garments and sat. Erik got straight to the point. “Tell her about the man.”

“Well.” Andy sat down, wrapped his legs around the front legs of the chair, and took a deep breath. “Erik says he's told you about the guy who skipped out.”

Hilda frowned.

“Left without paying,” said Erik impatiently. “Go
on,
Andy. Get to the good part.”

“Well, see, I was the one took care of him when he came in. A week ago today, that'd be.”

“What did he look like?” asked Hilda, interrupting.

Andy shrugged. “Ordinary. Rich. He had on good clothes.”

“I don't mean his clothes. His face, eyes, hair?”

“Didn't notice much. Oh, except he had a mustache. Sort of orangey-colored.” He waited for Hilda to ask other questions. She tucked away the satisfying detail of the mustache and nodded for him to go on.

“Well, he come in just about supper time, but he didn't want no supper. Not then, anyway. Just wanted to go up to his room. So I took him up in the elevator and carried his valise for him. A good piece of leather, and not worn much. You can tell a lot about customers by their bags. This fella looked rich, like I said. Not just the valise, but a nice suit, nice overcoat, expensive shoes. He'd just had a shine, too, at the station prob'ly.”

“Which station?” Hilda asked, leaning forward eagerly.

“Dunno. Coulda been any of 'em. I tried to get him talkin' some. Mostly if you can get 'em to talk to you, you get a bigger tip, and I reckoned this fella had lots of money to give away. Well, he gave me a quarter, all right, but he didn't want to talk. So I just figgered he was tired, and maybe if I was the one to take him down again when he left, I'd get more. He was gonna stay a week, so I'd have lots of chances to see him around, tip my hat to him, maybe take messages. Little things like that, we're supposed to do 'em anyways, 'cause this is a swell hotel.”

“Classy,” Erik interpreted in response to Hilda's furrowed brow. “Elegant.”

“So you coulda knocked me over with a feather when I went up to his room with a message on Wednesday morning, and he was gone. Bag an' all. I figgered maybe he was in a hurry, like, and didn't want to wait for help. Didn't need it, really, the valise wasn't real heavy. But it was kinda funny, all the same, 'cause he was on the fourth floor, and mostly people want to take the elevator—and who would've run it for him?

“So that's why I said somethin' to the manager, and that's when I found out the fella'd skipped out. Owed the hotel twelve dollars, 'cause he'd had one o' the best rooms and he ate dinner here both nights. Well, that's a lot of money, so the manager, he was riled, and he sent a telegram to the police in Fort Wayne, the fella's hometown. And come to find out there's no such address in the town, and no such person!”

Hilda's eyes grew big. “But Andy, what—?”

The bell at the front desk rang in clamorous summons. Someone shouted, “Front!” Andy jumped up.

“Gotta go. Don't know where the other boys are. Wait here.” He ran out the door.

Hilda stood up and began to pace. “Erik, this could be very important! Do the police know about this?”

Erik shrugged. “I guess they know about the guy skippin' out and givin' a made-up name.”

“And what are they doing about it?”

He just looked at her.

“Oh. You would not know, of course. But they should be trying to trace this man!”

“I guess they are. But they don't know everything.” Erik had a sly grin on his face.

“Erik Johansson! Do you mean there is something Andy is hiding from the police? That is very, very serious.”

“Not hiding exactly. He doesn't like the police. And they never asked him anything.”

Hilda remembered Andy's dislike of the police. It was mutual. When he was a little younger Andy had run with a rowdy gang of boys whom the police tended to blame for most small crimes in the city. Some of the group, Hilda knew, did in fact stoop to petty theft now and again, but most of them were decent kids, immigrants trying to get along in a strange and sometimes hostile environment.

“But what does he know that he hasn't told?”

“It's just something he found. It may not mean anything.” And Erik refused to say any more until Andy returned.

Meanwhile Hilda had taken time to organize her thoughts, and the first question she asked when Andy stepped into the room was the one she had started before he left. “Andy, what was the message you tried to deliver to—what was the name he gave?”

“Perkins. Mr. Harold Perkins. And I dunno what it was. The desk clerk gave it to me, sealed in an envelope, said to take it up to room four-seventeen. And when he wasn't there, I took it back to the desk.”

“Does the desk clerk still have it?”

“I think he gave it to the manager, on account of it might have told who Mr. Perkins really was, or where he was from, or some way to get him to pay his bill.”

“Then I must talk to the manager. Now, Andy, Erik says you found something that might be important. Why have you not taken it to the police?”

Andy's expression changed from affable to defiant. “Don't want nothin' to do with the police.”

“Yes, but—oh, never mind. Will you show it to me?”

He reached into the pocket of his tight-fitting trousers. A handkerchief, a piece of string, some lint, several coins, and a dirty, ragged scrap of paper appeared. He handed Hilda the paper and stuffed the rest back into the pocket.

She looked at it with distaste, holding it with thumb and one finger. “What is it?”

“It's a piece of a train ticket. I found it on the floor of his room. I reckon maybe it'd stuck to the bottom of his shoe, and that's how it got so dirty. That's another reason I didn't say anything about it, see. It might not have anything to do with him, just somethin' he happened to step on.”

Hilda looked more closely at the repellent object, with Erik peering over her shoulder. Under close scrutiny she could make out parts of a few words:
ary 1904
it read at the top end,
ia RR
in the middle, and
apolis
at the bottom.

“This month's ticket,” said Erik.

“And the Vandalia Railroad,” said Hilda. “But what's
apolis
?”

“Indianapolis, of course,” Erik replied with scorn. He had recently learned to spell the name of the state capital.

“But the Vandalia Railroad doesn't go there.”

“It does now,” said Andy. “I heard some men talking about it at the hotel. I didn't understand it all, but the Pennsylvania line bought up a lot of little railroads, only in Indiana they call it the Vandalia, and it goes to a lot of places it didn't use to. Now you can go straight to Indianapolis from here.”

“Then this man is from Indianapolis!” said Hilda triumphantly.

“If the ticket belonged to him,” said Andy.

“How many people live in Indianapolis?” asked Erik.

“A lot,” Hilda answered. She was deflating rapidly. “I don't know, but many, many more than in South Bend. A hundred thousand, maybe?”

The three looked at each other. Hilda sighed. “We will have to find him some other way. Did you find anything else in the room, Andy?”

He shook his head. “It was clean. He'd even made the bed.”

“Or never slept in it, maybe. Did you talk to the maid?”

“Mr. James did. He's the manager. I guess she didn't see anything unusual. Or anything with his real name on it.”

“What is her name?”

“Nellie. I dunno her last name. She's Polish.” Andy was German. There was a hint of condescension in his voice.

“Is she working today?”

“Dunno. The maids work six days a week, but they've got different days off, see, 'cause somebody's got to be on duty all the time.”

“Yes, well, I will have to find her. That will be my job. A maid can talk to a maid. You, Andy, and you, Erik, you will try to find out where the man who called himself Mr. Perkins went while he was in South Bend. He came to the hotel when, Andy—at what time on the Monday, I mean?”

“Near supper time, like I said. Six, maybe? Somewhere around then. I remember 'cause I was just about to go off duty.”

“From six last Monday evening, then, until he left town—well, I suppose on the first train to Indianapolis on Wednesday. I can ask at the Vandalia station.”

“We'll do that, miss,” said Andy. “And I'll ask all the boys who work at the hotel what they seen. And Erik can try to follow the trail.”

“Yes, that is good,” said Hilda with a sharp little nod. “But remember. Report what you find to me. Do
not
try to catch the man yourself, somehow. He is probably a murderer. Do you understand?”

They nodded solemnly, but there was a strong current of excitement in the room. With deep misgivings, Hilda stood to leave, just as two boys rushed into the room, wearing the same uniform as Andy.

“We had to unpack a trunk for a rich old lady,” one of them said. “It took a long time and she was really particular and she only gave us a dime each!”

“Never mind,” said Andy grandly. “There's something much more important for you to do now.”

Hilda shook her head and left the room.

She had no trouble finding the manager, nor did she find him uncooperative, once she had told him who she was and what she was trying to find out. “Believe me, miss,” he said, gesturing her to a seat in his office, “I want to find that man as much as the police do. I don't know if he's a killer, but he's for sure a thief, and I want him caught. But I've told the police all I know.”

“I wondered if you still have the message that was left for him.”

“Some message!” He reached into his desk drawer, pulled out an envelope, and tossed it across the desk to Hilda. The envelope had the hotel's name and address in the upper left-hand corner. It had been slit open; she pulled out the contents, three sheets of stiff, expensive hotel stationery.

“But—I do not understand. There is no message here, only stationery with nothing written on it.”

“And that's all there was when I opened it. Now, who would go to the trouble of leaving an envelope full of blank paper for a man who was already gone?”

The sheriff believes that the finding
of this man will go a long way
toward solving the mystery.

—South Bend
Tribune
   
February 5, 1904

 

 

 

14

H
ILDA SHOOK HER HEAD. “I do not know. It is foolish. And it gives us no clue to who the man is, or where he lives. Unless—maybe he knows one of the people who work for the hotel? Because of the paper.” She gave the envelope back.

The manager shook his head. “Anyone could get that stationery. It's available in all the bedrooms and in the writing desks in the lounges. Anyone could come in off the street and pull a stunt like this.” He threw the envelope onto his desk.

“Oh.” Hilda sat back, discouraged. “Well, do not throw it away. I may think of something. Also, I need to talk to the maid who served Mr. Perkins while he was here. Andy says her name is Nellie.”

“And that's another thing!” said Mr. James, throwing up his hands in disgust. “Seems like there's no limit to what can go wrong in a hotel. Nellie hasn't come in today, so the other maids are having to do extra duty. Fortunately the hotel isn't full, so we'll manage, but she'll find herself without a job when she does show up. If she's sick she should've sent a note.”